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Profit over patriotism

The Lowell Sun

Updated:
12/25/2012 06:35:47 AM EST

Recently an innovative battery manufacturer in Waltham, Mass., was sold to a Chinese company after less than a year of operation. The company had been given several million dollars in taxpayers' money as startup funding.

This is very similar to what occurred with Evergreen Solar in Ayer. They had been building solar panels and received $56,000,000 worth of taxpayer money to refurbish their manufacturing facilities at the former Fort Devens. After about a year in operation, it was revealed that a Chinese company was building an identical product selling for $100 less than Evergreen's. Feeling it could not compete, Evergreen shut down its operations and capitulated to the Chinese competition. Clawing back the seed money given to Evergreen is an effort that produced dubious results.

And what about A123 Battery in Waltham? Will that taxpayer money be recovered?

Part of A123 Battery Co.'s product line was a division that produced a product related to national defense. It raised great concern to think that we would be selling a United States company to a Chinese company that included one of our national-defense products. However, when one of the principals of A123 was interviewed about this transaction, the spokesman for A123 assured the interviewer that the part of the company concerned with national defense was not part of the deal in the sale to the Chinese buyer.

The spokesman then went on to inform the interviewer that the decision was purely an economic one.

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It had nothing to do with national defense. That leads one to ask the very disturbing question: if economic concerns did not save the national-defense product line from the Chinese, would the national defense product line have been sold to the Chinese company?

It is sickening to think that profit and not patriotism saved our country's military secrets.

With this value system, how long can the country endure? DAVID TIERNEY

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